Harkovast rants about movies from time to time, and I wanted to try it out too! I do recall an invitation (of sorts) to post away in this part of the forum… so here I go!

Granted, I did not see Avatar in 3D, in fact I waited until I could rent it to see it. But I am of the firm belief that if something relies solely on visual effects then it is crap. Good looking, perhaps entertaining, crap, but still crap. Avatar falls into this category. Allow me to explain.

First. Has it ever occurred that you have watched a movie so preachy, so blatant, that you started cheering for the bad guys? Sure, it may not happen often, but it happened for me in Avatar. I wanted the humans to exterminate every last single one of the giant blue freaks with their overly hippie (I don't mind hippie normally, really, but this was too much) attitude and primitive weapons. And their stupid little birdie-horsie things too!

But, under the preachy section, the thing that just drives me mad, is divine intervention. Oh goodness do I hate that. Not only is it Deus ex Machina, but it's a preachy Deus ex Machina! Oh no! The Freaky nature goddess thing is pissed off at us! Whatever the hell will we do! Bow down! Bow! Did I mention that this nature religion thing had all the trappings of a cult? Well it does!

And I didn't want the humans to win because I am some kind of Racist anti-environmentalist asshole. I don't think I am anyway. But I hate preachy. I really do. Hell, I'd cheer the Romans tossing early Christians to the lions if it were in a movie as preachy (in a pro-Christianity way) as Avatar! I do like the Romans, and can view their actions from their perspective, but I would never have someone thrown to lions. I also would not advocate the destruction of an entire people unless absolutely necessary for my own people to survive (rulers have to do things like that… good thing I'm not one I suppose), and I mean absolutely necessary.

But of course the Humans are too evil, greedy, etc for me to actively side with, I just was cheering more for them than the blue people. I didn't like them either! Huh. Just figures really. But the guy with the machine gun kills the guy with the bow in a stand up fight. Just saying.

Second. The pacing was off for me. Took too long to get things done, and didn't really captivate me in the build up. It was a far too long movie the way it was done.

Third. Not original in any way. Dances With Wolves? Never saw it, but it sounds the same. Then there is the Disney version of Pocahontas, and Fern Gully, which was better than Avatar because Tim Curry voiced the Bad Guy and Robin Williams voiced a crazy bat. The message and content is almost all the same… In fact, a negative review was given to Fern Gully stated, more or less, that: “The message the movie gives is that humans are evil, that doesn't do anything for anyone.” Avatar got rave reviews, but has a similar enough message. Avatar has the complexity and message of a Child's story told too long and in a dumber way.

Fourth. It was quite probably racist. The Blue people, The Navi or Na(t)iv(es) if you rearrange a few things and add some letters, are totally helpless against the evil (generally, white) humans… but then this (white, human) savior comes to them and leads them to great victory! Huzzah! Also, most humans are evil greedy gits who hate the environment. Or, white people are like that, or the Europeans were like that when they came to America, or whatever… and the Navi, or “Native Americans” were all happy nature lovey types with a perfect society. Sure, the colonials were not the nicest of blokes, but nor were the Native Americans.

Fifth. It is stupid. Leaving aside the idea that a bunch of primitive (tech wise anyway) giant people armed with bows, arrows, telepathic connection to some beasts, could really win in a stand up battle with a, even modern day, high tech force is odd (Remember the Ewoks and Stormtroopers from Star Wars 6? Yeah, then again, given the aim of the Stormtroopers…)… lets take a look at the final battle for a moment… “We're gonna load a bunch of explosives onto a big plane, ship thing, and drop it on their holy site.” The humans have spacecraft. They could drop what they need straight from there… why bother with the blundering in bit? “Nuke the site from orbit” I believe is a line from one of James Cameroon's older, better, movies… “Aliens”.

Sixth… I have an idea for a sequel. The humans return and… nuke the planet to shit, wipe the Navi out, (via nukes) and then send in teams to mine the “Unobtanium” (which, by the way, is a stupid name). This would be a somewhat realistic sequel. After all, we probably have enough nukes on Earth right now to get the job done; and that sounds like something us evil humans would do…

Seventh. The Dialog and the Characters. WHY!!??!?!? Enough said. If I wasn't a relatively nice person I would be demanding the script writers be taken out and shot. The only thing that makes this particular issue less problematic is that the actors are actually quite good. Or at least most of them are. Not that they had much to work with. And the Characters… Stock stock stock! Typical! We have evil racist Colonel person, Wise chief person who gets killed (Wes Studi, also known as Maugua from Last of the You Know Whats), Jealous boyfriend (who I wanted to die a nasty death… at least he died), white saviour person who works with the bad guys then has a change of heart, token girlfriend character and chief's daughter, etc. It gets ridiculous. No complexity at all.

Avatar is simple, straightforward, blunt, slow, preachy, and it comes in two “shades” white and black. This movie will not make you think. It's best feature is the shiny gloss. It is made for simple entertainment… and it fails in that as well for me to a degree. LOTM did not, even if it too is a piece of shit.

What do you all think? Bash me, bash Avatar, but I'm curious, c'mon! But don't bash Harkovast, it wasn't him who started this, but me, Canuovea, and I want credit (particularly the bad credit) to go to me. And I am aware how popular this movie was supposed to be.

I never saw Avatar.
Why?
Basically for all the reasons you have listed.
I dont like to be preached at.
I dont like the whole “white guy goes to live with natives nad becomes their leader and saves them from other white people” racist plot line.
I dont like excessive CGI.
Unobtainium is a silly name.

Everything I have heard of this film makes it sound like the most pointless crap imaginable, so I am not willing to fork out money for it. Maybe in a few years time when I can pick up the special eddition DVD for a fiver…

Amusingly, the “nuke frm orbit, its the only way to be sure!” line was spoken by sigourney weaver, who always appears in this film.
And having heard about what an obnoxious bunch of space hippies the Navi are, I whole heartedly agree with her.

Nuke em, Nuke em, Nuke em, Nuke em, Nuke em! Nuke em high, Nuke em low! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

Erm. Yeah. Your instincts are correct.

i watched avatar, and guess what? i found the story lacking. but since were talking might as well be specific about what i dont and do like.

what i dont like
1. unobtanium, seriously?
as one of the first big wtfs we come across is the funding of the little rock known as unobtanium. what is it?… i dont know! the never really say anything as to what the hell the damn thing is for! the big thing driving the evil greedy humies and they never give a good explaination as to what the hell it does! when the obviously dickish director or whatever (douche who plays mini golf?) explains that the reason they are there and funded is because of the ugly shiny rock that is worth ungodly amounts of money back on earth, and then thats all we get. missing something, aint it? now, when he picks it up from his desk, its floating a bit off the table above a small device. when my dad saw the hallelujah mountains he thought it was because of the unobtainium. if that is what is causing these things to float there is no atention to that point. one, the device could have caused the rock to float, two, magnetic stuff was going on around the giant floating mountains that could have made that float, and third, why the hell are they making huge holes in the ground for something that supposedly floats naturally? i also argue the existence of this stuff when we start looking at the periodic table of elements. from hydrogen to uranium and beyond, we got most of the naturally occuring elements down. also, we have those naturally occuring elements and dig them up. alot of stuff is man made, and doesnt occur in nature naturally. so, how the hell did a new substance dubbed unobtanium come to be buried everywhere on that planet? and finally, who the hell got high while coming up with that name?
2. physiology of a nekko smurf elf
i get that we cant expect movie writters to create whole worlds of unique alien critters. still, the hammer head rhinocerous and the panther thingy did look unique enough to seem alien like to a degree, though it was obvious what roles they filled. its good enough that when i saw the navi, i realized that these guys were not of the same biology as the things around them! they look too human, especially when running through a world of six limbed animals that breath through holes on their necks and dont have hair and have multiple eyes. how the hell did those features evolve off of the navi?
3.bioluminescense is done to death!
why is the forest dark? wouldnt it be nice if the forest were lit up like a christmas tree? well, things tend to glow in pandora, alot. i guess it makes things look more wonderlandish or alien, but really, it must suck for those black panthers and hyena things when they stand out like a guy wearing a black sweater in a white room. i guess the climax of ‘why does everything wear neon here?’ was when they found a lizard (creativity died there i guess) that when startled, slowly floated away on this brightly glowing flap of skin i guess that it span around with like a helicopter. the helicopter lizard, or that which is most likely to die off by next year. i hope they're poisonous, cause that would make an easy meal for any hungry creature that isnt blind.
4.eywa or whatever is a bitch
it cracks me up at the end battle every time i see the horde of wild animals coming up after the now slaughtered navi.eywa takes no sides, right until she realizses that her ass is about to get nuked. then shit starts to get done. wow, youre loyal subjects are dead your highness, i guess you just wanted to balance out nature and have a large population cut down in the fastest way possible, didnt you? then again, im sure the audience wanted to see the hippies get ripped through by gunfire by then.
5.neytiri would have been better in different hands
the female lead character of blue team does a dumb thing that really makes me pick on her. she falls in love with jake. why, why, why, why, WHY! its so cliche, and so pointless, and literally grinds with everything that is going on. she is promised to some other blue guy not by choice but tradition. total fuck you to the order of her society and the chain of succesion. even if she was falling in love with him she wouldnt have been so easy about it and jumped jakes bone like she did in the movie. would you screw someone you ‘liked’ if it would mean pissing on the wishes not only of your parents but your society as a whole which may or may not lead to conflict amongst its members and most likely directed at you without so much a hint as a “maybe i shouldnt be doing this”? it didnt make sense. on that, she also hated the guy when she met him, and then was forced to teach him how to be a navi. what about that says it would lead to anything romantic? not to mention, he is an avatar. im sure thats a turn off, i think, for a culture at war? hell, maybe when everythings done, the war won, her groom to be found splat on the forest floor, maybe then she could have been interested, but she got hit with the cliche bat and became the girlfriend. guh
6.alien-human relations broke down fast
i would think that one of the universes only other sentient races would be treated a bit more thoughtfully than the sound of gunfire. but hey, theyre just greedy ass humans, am i right?
7. an infamous line of infamy
when theyre buldozzing over a sacred forest place the director guy takes note of the two now wrongfully mated love birds and says a line that i swear needs to be quoted from the lips of evil whenever acceptable. i cant remember how it exactly goes but its something like “keep going, these guys need to learn that we dont stop.” thats the line that i remember most from that movie. thats what came out of this movie for me.
8.bamboo is from outer space
i understand that we like trees and put them everywhere in our scifi stories, evolution of alien biology aside. but early on in the movie jake gets chased through a bamboo forest by the panther thing. trees, blend into the background, bamboo, is really damn noticeable. so be warned, the bamboo wants to take over our world. dont forget it!
9. that is a horse, not an alien.
its pretty self explanatory, they really fekked up the xenopony.

now, on to things i did like. ill keep it short.

scifi stuff
the big thing that i liked from the movie is the whole neural link between organisms on pandora. i have no idea how something like that would evolve, but its pretty damn unique in my book. definetly the big thing i tore out to reformat for my own devices. also the fact that you would die if you didnt wear a mask does actually further the design of it being an alien world. also, the designs for many of the alien animals and plants were unique and aside from the navi it did seem to follow darwinism pretty well. you could tell that these animals were apart of an ecosystem and not random designs someone threw out and painted blue.
characters
ripley and the girl pilot were my favorite good guys. movie killed them, but they died honorably. the colonel, though evil, was a very good choice for that position. seriously, if the crapometer went from green, to yellow, to “oh snap, shit just went down” wouldnt you want that guy to be blowing up blue team for you? heck, its not really his fault that things came to war in the first place. that was the douchebags fault for not giving a shit about relations with the natives. he got what he needed to be ready, did what had to be done, and tried to pick up the pieces of the vase that the most loathsome character of the cast broke in the first place. outside of one bad line that should have been cut, he was pretty good at being evil. i guess you could say that the acting was good save one or two spots.

and thats mah opinion on the movie

There was a line in the movie “Death at a Funeral” where an old man, high on something and sitting on a roof naked, says “Why is everything so fucking green?” I had a similar experience with this movie, but replace green with glowey bluey things…

I'm not sure that the Neytiri would have been better in different hands (depends what you mean by “hands” I suppose, wink wink, nudge nudge…), I don't blame the character getting hit with the “cliche stick” (gotta use that more often) on the actor, rather on whoever wrote the damn thing.

My main problem wasn't the acting, in fact the actors generally did a good job, but whoever decided on who the characters were simply went with cliches etc. Actors were good, characters I didn't particularly care for. The odd cliched character is okay (evil bad colonel fellow was pretty good) but after that… just too much for me.

I do agree that a lot of the sci-fi stuff was actually decent. And the whole mask thing made sooo much sense. And even the environment was pretty well done… but still doesn't save the movie.

what i meant about the neytiri is that if they didnt go the girlfriend rout, or kept it as ‘just friends’ then it would have made more sense and i think make her a better character. but whoever wrote her didnt think about that. which is why she would have been in better hands with someone who would have thought of that. still…

“yeah, when i joined the avatar program i asked the doctors to make some… modifications? lets just say the word train has a whole new meaning in their dictionary.”
*bow chika wow wow*

That last little bit there had me cracking up for about a minute. I only write this to acknowledge your masterful improvement on that type of classic joke. I never thought I'd laugh at one of those, but, lo an behold, I have. Wow.

Wow,you guys are very,ummm…wordy? :p
I didn't watch it and I don't care about it cause it looks cliche and character designs look stupid
I'm feelin' extra vocal today

Wow, your opinions and ideas about this overrated piece of crap coincide PERFECTLY. They na-vi would NEVER have beaten a race as advanced technologically as the humans. For one thing, they could have all gotten onto their spaceships and bombed the planet from orbit. Firebombing would also eradicate most of the (realistic) threat (guerilla warfare in the trees). Those giant dragon-y things that ripped helicopters to shreds? BULLSHIT. A heat seeking missile to the face would take care of them in one go. I could rant about this for as long as you did, but since you did all the work for me, I'll leave it at that.. All the points you brought up, I have brought up in arguments with my friends who think Avatar is the best thing ever… They also thought The Last Airbender was good!!!

UGH.

By the way, have you seen this guy's review? He goes in depth as to why it is a bad movie from start to finish, and why people like it anyways. http://www.redlettermedia.com/avatar.html

Redlettermedia is awesome!
I just wish he would hurry up and review Revenge of the Sith!
Avatar, how ever unworthy it may be, will remain the highest grossing film of all time for some time now…at least until Harkovast: The Movie gets green lighted.

harkovast
Redlettermedia is awesome!
I just wish he would hurry up and review Revenge of the Sith!
Avatar, how ever unworthy it may be, will remain the highest grossing film of all time for some time now…at least until Harkovast: The Movie gets green lighted.

Nooo, you're still broken from that topic on elves from a year ago….

i wonder how you would handle it tsavokraH if they made a bad movie out of harkovast? you could never show your face without shame in the drunk duck forums ever again…

Dwrean on the contrary, I would be laughing all the way to the bank with all the money they paid me!
They can have Michael Bay direct it and turn it into a sequal to pearl harbour and I would be happy as long as I got paid.
Not only would I make cash, I would get masses of hits from all the publicity!

yep, masses of hits, from fists, no doubt. also, how can you say that, and then slam bad movies in your reviews?
also, why is your avatar in an iron man outfit?

Yeah, Avatar was pretty awful, I tried convincing myself not to listen to the hype but even with that in mind I was still let down.

The evil General definitely was the best character in the movie, not because he was well written…far from it, but he did perform some pretty badass moves in the final fight scene, that and the actor said he might return in the sequel after saying something like “You think one measly arrow's gonna stop me?” which I might be paraphrasing a bit, but it is pretty badass.

But yeah, the shit was still pretty bad. It had nice visual effects but I guarantee that in a few years, they'll look outdated. That's just the way CGI is, especially massive CGI dumps like this.

Alright, I've finally seen the movie and now I can give my opinion.

Meh.

Very much Meh.


This is the film equivalent of a happy meal.
Colourful packaging but just empty calories.

I wasn't left enraged, just wondering “Was that it? This is what people are raving about?”

CGI gets on my nerves as we all know but here I have to admit some of it did look very impressive.

But when you get beyond looks, there is nothing here.
No characters, no originality, just empty, pointless colours and lights for a few hours.

Now people have (on this forum no less), torn this movie apart with vicious glee, so I wont repeat the many valid criticisms that have been thrown at the film.

What I want to do, is a rise a key point that struck me as I watched the movie.

THESE PEOPLE ARE MORONS!
Which people?
All of them.
Everyone in this movie is a moron.
The plot only makes sense if you assume everyone involved is stupid and/or insane….or maybe just working for the other side!
The decisions they take are so bat shit crazy that they were constantly leaving me going “Wait…what?”

So let me give you the run down of my top Avatards.

1- General McMoron.
I dont remember the generals name, but since he was more of a character from Street Fighter 2 than a real character, that is not surprising.
Unfortunately, he may have been tough, but he sure wasn't smart.
The Navi are massing in their thousands to attack your base, what do you do?
Take cover within the base?
Clear the forest around the base to give you a clear line of fire?
Launch some missile strikes or orbital bombardments to break those Navi up a bit?

No way! Lets go on the offensive because….um….well who knows? But where to attack?
How about in the one place on the planet where their are floating rocks that not only allow the enemy to launch an aerial ambush (something they would have been able to do NOWHERE else) but also disrupt your sensors and targeting equipment, massively levelling the playing field.
All this so you could blow up a holy Navi site. Now there was no way of knowing how the Navi would respond to this if he had succeeded. Previous evidence suggested that attacking their cultural sites had caused them to mass together for a giant attack….but this time it was bound to make them give up because….ummm….

Also, did the general have a plan for if the Navi had attacked the base while his entire army was out on this vandalism mission? Just a thought.

The general also sent all his soldiers running through the jungle, clearly setting them up for an ambush….or he would have been if he hadn't just met his match in the stupid stakes with his opponents…

2- The Navi- So dumb they would soon go extinct anyway.

The Navi are dumb as dirt.
They encounter a human-Navi hybrid who turns out to be a solider.
Now previously, the Navi have fought skirmishes with the humans (The movie makes this point very clear). They have also spoken with a and been taught English by human scientists (this point is also made clear.) So they know the difference between scientists and soldiers (one teaches you…one kills you!)
So when they realise they have encountered a hybrid who is a soldier, are they concerned? Worried by a change in the “sky people” tactics?
No they instead decide to take him into the tribe and teach him their ways.
Yes, they want to teach an ENEMY SOLDIER all the secrets of jungle survival and the layout of their village and basically everything else the humans could POSSIBLY want to know to mount an attack.
At first I assumed the Navi were bring the hero into their society so they could mine him for info.
Questions like-
“What do the sky people want?”
“How many sky people are there?”
“What are the weaknesses of the sky peoples weapons and machines?”
“Can we trade to get some sky people weapons of our own?”
So what do they ask the hero? Fuck all.
They are apparently the least curious people in the universe.
They don't just not ask obvious and VERY important questions about tactics, they also don't show any interest in where he is from, what life is like for humans (after all, they seem to have no idea how to survive, so what do they do on their world? You would think the Navi might wonder!)
Their stupidity is soon repaid when the humans demolish their tree village using the info that the hero gave them about its structure so they know exactly where to shoot.
Now having had a few run ins with humans, you would assume, the Navi would be well aware of the humans deadly fire power and the need for stealth and getting in close to fight them in the jungle.
Well, turns out not, as they mount a fucking CAVALRY CHARGE! Straight at the rows of human machine guns and basically allow massive numbers of their warriors to be torn to bits for absolutely no reason and accomplishing nothing.
Amusingly, at the start of the film the love interest tells the hero he acts like a baby, making so much noise. So the Navi use cunning and stealth to hunt, but come in whooping loudly when they fight people with guns.
I don't know why the navi felt that what they themselves would describe as “baby” tactics were appropriate for most important battle their world had ever seen…oh yeah I do! Cause they are all idiots!
Oh yeah and if you capture a big flying monster, which is so easy a human figures out how to do it in about five minutes, you get to become king of all Navi.
You just fly above the thing and then swoop down on it and BANG, you are the Navi king.
Thats one hell of a system of government they got their! A big flying lizardocracy!
Best thing, is only 5 navi in recorded history ever worked this out.
But one human? He gets it immediately.
Its lucky for them Jake was a traitor to the humans, or he could have just become king and then ordered these blue morons to surrender.

3- The Hero….either incredibly stupid of an evil genius!
The actions of the hero are so insanely stupid and destructive that I am left wondering if he is actually smart, but just pure evil.
He seems to take actions that so clearly lead to war that I am struggling to understand how it could not be on purpose.
His mission is to warn the navi that they will soon be attacked and negociate with them to move.
He never mentions this to the navi.
He never tells them what the humans want or why.
He doesn't warn the Navi that they are in any danger.
He just enjoys pretending to be a Navi for 3 months.
Is he meant to be slacking off or something?
Why the hell does he do this?
However, he doesn't tell the humans he isn't bothering to negociate. He just carries on as if he is doing the mission.
Better yet, he feeds information to General Mcbadguy about how to attack the Navi.
So he is doing everything in his power to convince the humans that the navi wont cooperate, while giving them the info that will embolden them to attack.

How can people watching this movie and not notice this? Has CGI rendered the whole world blind?

During the final battle, even if the Navi are morons, Jake must have at least some concept of what happens when guys on horses charge a line of machine guns and rocket launchers, and yet he lets the navi run in there, sending them to the their deaths in their thousands.

And this is the guy the Navi make THEIR FUCKING KING!
But a people so lacking in curiosity as the Navi probably would be easy to manipulate. Their complete failure to ask any questions about what is happening means they never spot the holes in Jakes story….cause he doesn't tell them any story! He just lives with them! They never even ask why he was sent!

So who is the biggest idiot?
Pressumably the movie going public, that would make this poorly written, nonsensical, heavy handed to the point of being funny, CGI light show the highest grossing movie of all time.

I borrowed it from someone, so I am not part of the problem this time around!

I made sure to rent it. There was no way I was forking over the more than 4$s to see this movie. I wonder how much of that goes to Mr. Cameroon?

Yeah. They were pretty stupid.

Going on the offensive is fine and all, but… why bring the ground troops if this is an aerial operation? What was the point? Seems to me that they just brought the ground troops to have some kind of shootem up for viewers.

And while we are on the subject of things that fly: Why not freaken nuke the site from orbit! I mean… you have spaceships, and I'm pretty sure the flying lizards can't breath in space. Use the stupid spaceships! It's not like a big holy tree can move!

Why do Blue Man Group arrows go through helicopter windows in the final battle, but not when thousands of arrows get shot at the ships when they blow up the big tree thing?

And the Navi are definitely stupid. So stupid that it takes a nature Goddess Deus ex Machina to pull their blue asses out of the fire, irregardless of the other character's stupidity. Now, that's stupidity.

Just don't let James Cameroon direct a Harkovast movie. He'd spend heaps of money on developing a crappy set of movie technology that will hopefully fade from view in the next 30 years. After that, the chances of you getting any money from it are pretty low. Then he'd make the Ano Chee blue. Oh and KITW would become a human with corporate motives… yes, he'd try to make a character human, I'm sure of that. Oh, and he'd make Shogun a nice sympathetic character because Shogun abandoned evil western style culture for a good one. Did I mention that you wouldn't get any money? Why? Well, he couldn't have someone else taking credit for his work!

Okay. I don't know what James Cameroon really would do. But… it's almost as scary as M. Night Shahaylah, who might make the fighting scenes into interpretive dance (kinda like he did with the other Avatar, er, Last Airbender).

Alright. I'll stop teasing famous directors for no good reason.

As long as I get a big sack of money they can have Michael Bay direct the Harkovast movie…well okay, that might be going a bit TOO far!

thanks hark,you made me remember more things that made me angry about this movie. but first off, to actually…*gulp*…corrct things pointed out by you. first off, the general went for a full on assault against the navi because they were amassing their army. if he didnt take the offensive, they would have been outnumbered, i dunno, a hundred to one or something, who cares. essentially it would have been starship troopers, in which you get 10k kills, but the base has to be evacuated eventually or you would all die. also, to get to said tree, which was in the middle of the mountains, so you had to fly in to kill their god. literally they were trying to snipe the blue neko smurf elfs jesus. if DC got nuked, their would be chaos in america, wouldnt there? considering the ground forces, it was a all in push, there was no second chance, they had to divide the attention of the navi and they had to put a bullet in a tree.
still, this is all considering they ignore one big fact. SPACE.SHIP.ORBITAL.DROOOOOOP! you could fly over them, go directly to the tree, and tell them to go fuck themselves! hell, use the main force to distract the navi from one direction, drop the bomb from above/behind with your space ship if you want to be cautious. better yet, these guys, with giant walking robots, dont have birds that can fly by themselves. you would think that we would have some kind of robotic force, also, considering that the guys funding this ride is probably nasa!( as a side note, would it be cool to have robots killing navi too?) okay, maybe the whole mountain thing could have messed with AI, and maybe they thought the whole jump into space and drop down right on to it would be suicide, but lets get to another technical note. we have flying planes that dont need to breathe, couldnt we just, ya know, flown over the blue blob o death and landed, yet again, on top of the tree.
and the goddamn tree. i get that its biological function is to harvest neural information and reformat it into some kind of bio-virtual heaven and diety or something, but why is it focused there! i think we saw some other eywa trees get mowed over after jake and netyri, ya know, went completely illogical and out of character, i think. as such, why arent there other trees elsewhere? why do the other tribes not have their own eywa or whatever? you would think that the most important plant, one that links together all life together, would be a bit more populous, or at least have a back up. course, i dont know the physiology of the god tree, which reminds me, what happens when that tree gets old and keels over? who knows? i cant even think straight anymore! why tsavokraH, why!
ya know, fuck it, WAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH! kill da ugly blue humies!

So they had to launch a pre-emptive strike against people armed with bows and arrows and spears?
What exactly would the charge of Navi done against the bases defences?
The only way the Navi could be a threat is if they could get in close nad launch an ambush.
We saw how hopeless a Navi cavalry charge was, and their air force was only dangerous when they could get in close and ambush (due to the bad guys going into the flying rocks where the Navi could hide and which ALSO took out the humans sensor equipment).
Flying straight at the human copters in the open, those navi dragons would have all been shot down with air to air missiles while they were still specks on the horizon.

How on earth could an army of primitives possibly attack a fortified base full of people who knew they were coming?
They would have been cut to ribbons (just like they were).

Maybe magic mother Gia or whatever their moronic tree hugger religion was could have over run the base with animals, but that was a deus ex machina that niether side could have seen coming and so we cant take it into account when considering whether what either group was doing made any sense.

Remember also that the navi are not mindless or infinitely aggressive. The bad guys plan was to demoralise them by attacking a religious site (cause there is not way at all that doing that would just make them even more angry…)
How demoralised do you think the Navi would be by hundreds upon hundreds of them being torn to bits by machine gun fire as they rush forward in futile human wave tactics (okay, navi wave, but you get the idea!)
The bugs in star ships troopers could keep breeding more bugs very quickly, the bugs were mindless controlled war machines and their loss was no great harm to bug society. They were basically just tools of the group collective.
Losing thousands and thousands of their warriors would be a crippling bow to the navi, both in terms of their society and mentality.
It would only take a few entirely one sided battles before they would give up, or simply be unable to continue.

How long do you think Jake the Navi king could hold his alliance together after a couple of insane rushes at the humans base? Most of the other tribes would probably call it a bad job and fuck off back to their homes.

The ONLY reason the Navi stood a chance was that the humans tactics were idiotic.
And the only reason the Navi won was because magic tree god rescued them, rendering the entire battle sequence pointless.

Hark, don't underestimate the Na'vi! Look what happened to Custer! (I guess. He didn't have the machine guns… because he thought he didn't need them)

Well, the Navi are supposed to be pretty tough as is (individually far more than a human), so maybe more of them could overwhelm the base. I guess we can give Cameroon that (well I can). This is despite the fact that it made no difference in the final battle (the Navi got butchered pretty good). So Mr. Colonel can be given the benefit of the doubt, as I see it.

Still. The execution of the whole thing was insane.
Again, why ground troops? We know that the Navi ground troops can't harm the humans flying things! Why bring the ground troops? Why not nuke the site from orbit! It's a good thing Sigourney Weaver was on the alien's side this time, cause if she wasn't…

Yeah, attacking Holy Sites is always dangerous, but it can work too. The Romans dismantled the Temple at Jerusalem and seemed to… well, things didn't get worse. Much. It was a stupid decision, but was it really all that bad? If we give Mr. Cameroon credit enough so that the defensive option was doomed, well, what else could Mr. Colonel have done? Oh, right, wait for an attack somewhere where the helicopter things would work properly, then firebomb them. Who knows?

Still, the fact that the humans were winning the battle before magic tree god intervened doesn't speak well for not using defensive tactics. But hey, it doesn't matter, because Mommy Tree would have saved them anyway. We could have had something like the Alamo, but with the good guys being the ones attacking! I can't think of a time when that has happened. But nooooo. We get this.

The colonel may have had a reason for doing something on paper sounds liek a terrible idea.
The navi may have had a reason for doing things that sounds like a terrible idea.
The hero guy almsot certianly doesn't have a reason for the stupid shit he did but there is still a slim possibility there could be an explanation for his bullshit.

The problem is, stupid compounds on stupid till everyone involved seems like an idiot.

If it had been played that the colonnel was being dangerously reckless by attacking (having other soliders voice concerns but being shouted down by him in his lust for navi blood) then I would buy some of these excuses.
But the real reason is just lazy writing to move forward a tired, poorly thought out plot.

Why did the colonnel attack? Cause the plot needed him too.

No other reason at all.

Oh yeah, it was also so we could shoe horn in a really stupid anti war on terror message (navi terror? The navi had not attacked yet! That was not just cheesey, it was nonsensical in context! If I had been listening to that speach I would have just been confused and possibly assumed their was booze in that mug he kept sipping from!)
Preemptive strike? They did everything short of saying the navi had WMD and standing in front of a mission accomplished banner.

My fiance and my opinion was that the plot was unoriginal. (Some ideas that come to mind are Dances with Wolfs and The Last Samurai) We liked the look of the movie and wished we saw it in 3D especially after hearing an interview with Cameron and knowing he did most of the shooting.

The truly sad thing is… they have sequels in the works.

How exactly do you make a sequel? If they just have another group of humans invade Pandora, then isn't it essentially the same plot as the first movie? And I honestly don't know what other plot you could come up with.

the humans come and nuke the planet from orbit while playin ‘i dont want to set the world on fire’ and THEN invade the planet.

Or as the Navi blow up: “We'll meet again, don't know where, don't know when. But I know we'll meet again, some sunny day…”

Canuovea
Or as the Navi blow up: “We'll meet again, don't know where, don't know when. But I know we'll meet again, some sunny day…”

…IN HELL!

What was it they said on South Park?
About James Cameron spending millions of dollars to kill smurfs?

Hey guys! I just found out what the next Avatar movie is gonna be called!

The Last of the Navi

Here's the plot!

An epic adventure and passionate romance unfold against the panorama of a frontier wilderness ravaged by war. Academy Award® winner Daniel Day-Lewis (Best Actor in 1989 for My Left Foot) stars as Hawkeye, rugged spaceman and adopted son of the Navi, and Madeleine Stowe is Cora Munro, aristocratic daughter of a proud English Colonel. Their love, tested by fate, blazes amidst a brutal conflict between the English, the French and Navi allies that engulfs the majestic mountains and cathedral-like forests of Pandora.

Doesn't that sound great? They even dropped the pretense and made all the evil humans English!

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… thoughts, anyone? i, i cant.